Nicktendo

I'm in tonight. Edit: I seem to be missing from the league table. I have only played one week this year though to be fair.

I'd also be interested, for me evenings are best, anytime after 8pm GMT

Obviously Blue version.

Just switched this on for the first time in about a month, the number of players ranked in the first cup is now at 52,000+. Pretty decent sales for an eshop game at €15. Wonder what their target was.

I'm with Sheikah on Sunshine. It was ridiculously ambitious if we compare it to other Mario games, not only for FLUDD and clearing up mechanic (Splatoon, anyone?) but they took Mario into a completely different setting and moved away from the traditional feel of the Mario universe. This is evident in the way the fan base reacted to it. Some loved it, some hated it. I was in the former camp. When I said they were on the top of the game I was trying to point out that every major Nintendo release on the Wii U has been the best we've seen for many, many years. In this respect, no, Nintendo haven't been overly ambitious. However, if we look at Splatoon, their approach to DLC and their farming of 2nd parties (Hyrule Warriors, Platinum Games etc), then they have been incredibly ambitious this generation. Smash Bros being the peak of the ambition. That roster will never, ever be recreated. The music, the fan service. It's not only a love letter to Nintendo, but to gaming in general.

I agree to an extent, but Nintendo have been very successful as of late in bringing second parties to the fold and overseeing development. Granted more so on the 3DS than the WiiU, but they do deserve some credit in that regard. Metroid Prime would arguably fall into the same category as W101 or a Level-5 RPG. Maybe with just a bit more of a hands-on approach.

I think this may have a lot to do with the fact that I'm not in the UK anymore and haven't been for so long. When you're not as exposed to console gaming as a popular mainstream hobby, or when your aren't chatting with your mates about it down at the pub, seeing adverts on TV etc. it's like living in a bubble. My gaming time is a completely isolated experience these. I've never even played, or could probably name off the top of my head, a great story driven game (Something like the Last of Us, right? ). Missing the launch undoubtedly contributed to my feelings as well. Maybe @Kounan can relate being in Eastern Europe, but I do indeed think the Wii U is a mighty fine piece of kit, even if my perspective is somewhat skewed.

Interesting to read the various opinions on here about how people's relationship to Nintendo changes. I can relate to what most of you are saying and I'm sure for everyone in this forum there is a strange love / hate relationship with the company. Towards the end of the Wii's lifetime I took a two year break from gaming completely, during the GameCube / Wii era I'd mostly been playing Xbox or PlayStation. My love of Nintendo had been dwindling for almost 10 years before I finally gave up and the 3DS and Wii U were the first Nintendo consoles since the 64 that I didn't buy at launch. I got my Wii U shortly after Mario Kart 8 released and the 3DS a couple of months later. For me, they are the best home console and handheld respectively Nintendo has ever released. I'm having a great time with both consoles and the games have kept me entertained and challenged for hours, which had been happening less and less with each previous generation. I appreciate some genres are severely lacking on Nintendo consoles (particularly racers, sports games and shooters), but on the other hand many genres are very, very well covered. Perhaps it was the break that's made me feel this way, or maybe even the lack of time / desire to even know about what's happening with Xbox / PS, let alone play anything on them. I understand 100% why Nintendo is turning many people away, but as a 'back-to-basics' console without all the online, connected whistles and bells of a modern console, the really stellar library of fun and imaginative games has been more than enough for me on both consoles. Had the Wii U released 15 years earlier, I think more of us'd be in agreement :wink:... But this is 2016, and for many Nintendo's traditionally conservative approach just doesn't cut it anymore. It's a shame, because gameplay wise I strongly believe Nintendo are at the very top of their game right now.

I'm working late tonight, again, so I'm out I'm afraid

I haven't got any of the smash DLC yet because of the obscene pricing, but I totally downloading Bayonetta tonight.

I was sat at work the other day browsing the bookmarker on my phone and then it hit me... Why don't Nintendo release a digital only 3DS version so we can (at the very least) play levels on the go. Super Mario Player if you will. Would be great to browse the bookmarker on the 3DS and play something instantly. Wonder if they'd be able to get it running given the 3DS's technical abilities.

No I agree completely, it's inconvenient. But the possibility to use it is there. As I said before, voice chat, particularly party chat would be great for Nintendo. I just don't think it's the main thing that's missing. I understand that 99% of the forum users want it and it's a major bug bear for most of us, however NX's success won't be defined by it's inclusion. It seems to me they have much bigger things to worry about. Doesn't Minecraft Wii U have in game chat anyway?

And what exactly is stopping Wii U owners using Skype then? Every phone, tablet and laptop uses it. Everyone owns a pair of headphones. Whether it's through the same system or not is irrelevant.

None of us do, I'm only offering you an alternative view. Except the figuers don't always tell the full story, particularly with Minecraft. I don't dispute that. That was my argument. PC kids are probably using Skype. This is their best option if they want to voice chat in-game. Your younger brother was doing it at 10, so are my students. Anecdotal evidence. I never claimed anything other than this. The people streaming online multiplayer communicate using skype, the videos demonstrate this. I am offering opinion about Nintendo should do in the future, based on my feelings as a Nintendo gamer... Just like everyone else in this forum. How is this relevant? We can all discuss numbers and figuers until we're blue in the face, but really none of us know what they will do, and what will be succesful. It's all conjecture.

My point about piracy was that outside of the UK and the West in general the game is played only on PC, pirated and immensely popular. There are countless YouTube streams and videos of non-English gamers playing the game and they all communicate via Skype. Hell I do exactly that with my students who are all playing pirated copies. Actual PC sales represent only a small fraction of the overall community and they play the game absolutely fine without built in voice chat. I'm not debating that little Johnny from from Windsor sits at home and plays online with his friends on a 360, but globally, I believe this is still the exception rather than the rule. But all this is beside the point. I WANT party voice chat on the NX, but I don't believe it's going to be the system seller some are making it out to be.

I was getting at the fact they went for power, industry standard graphics and control, as well as maintaining some level of decent 3rd party support. The problem was there was no USP, other than the fact that the GC was a fisher-price looking "games only device" in order to sell at this cheaper price and appeal to a wider market as "the cheap option". The lack of DVD was meant to be a plus, but they hadn't banked on it's success. Functionally, the consoles were on a par with the competition. Of course, the cartridges and mini-discs made actually competing 100 times more difficult. Couple this with the software, which while absolutly stellar, was aimed solely at Nintendo fans, and not a wider audience. I agree 100% that it's time to get rid of the Wii branding, and Nintendo's pitifully incoherent message with branding / marketing pretty much killed the Wii U before it even launched. The Wii damaged Nintendo's image in our minds, sure, but I still think time will tell if younger gamers from this gen will come back in 5-10 years.

I was under the impression that none of our friends own Wii Us and only people we chat online to on a Nintendo forum do.. :wink: What about all those people who go to restaurants or for a beer with friends so they can sit in silence and check facebook and write to OTHER friends. I thought that was what's hip these days.

Allow me to clarify a few points. With regard to what @Sheikah said about Minecraft, I didn't say the sales were better on consoles, I said it was more popular on PC. It's the system of choice. Think about how many people are playing pirate copies, or are playing with mods. The developers even advocated piracy of the game way back in 2012. I can't see Nintendo not including party chat for the next console, it's an industry standard now and they'd be stupid not to include it. But this is linked to friends and their improvements on the Wii U in this regard, and the upcoming Nintendo Network indicate they are taking online more seriously than back in 2006. It was a mistake not to include it, but nevertheless I side with Nintendo that chatting online and playing with friends will never truly replace the couch experience. Something which kids still have the time and freedom to enjoy, and us older gamers don't. For us, there are ways around it, like Skype as you pointed out. Where younger gamers are concerned, I'm simply advocating that Nintendo shouldn't pander to them, but inspire them. We can see with Mario Maker, Splatoon and Yokai Watch that Nintendo are moving forward in this area, not like in the GameCube era, for example, where they churned out sequels. It's not about giving them what they think they want, but what they haven't seen yet, something new. For us Nintendo fans both this and nostalgia will be the draw. Who knows what will happen when the kids who grew on the DS and Wii get a disposable income, will we see another spike in nostalgic teens / young adults as we saw after the NES and SNES era? There's no reason to suggest it couldn't happen. Between them they sold 250 million units, on a par, if not higher than the sales in the 80s and 90s. I think one of the biggest problems that arises when being critical of Nintendo is how the match up against the competition. They tried this with the N64 and the GameCube and it didn't work for them. The Wii was a success because it did what the others didn't. In 2006/7 it was ingenious and caught the public's imagination. Unfortunately they couldn't maintain the success and the console became a huge disappointment in its later life, but as we've seen from the activity of the past few years (merging handheld and console dev studios), embracing online, connected and mobile technology, they are better placed to counteract this. Many of the points you raise are entirely valid, and I wholeheartedly agree with many gripes of older Nintendo gamers, but what we want is not necessarily what's best for Nintendo. If they want to chase kids and make lifelong Nintendo gamers then they have to be original and take some risks, and just like the Wii, that has the potential to anger older fans. Simply doing what the competition is doing, in an overcrowded marketplace none the less, just won't cut it anymore, particularly when you factor in the marketing budgets of Sony and Microsoft.

I've never been a big fan of Vice, I think their journalism is for the most part pretty shoddy... and I have to say I don't agree with this article in the slightest, or indeed many of the comments in this thread. Let's remember first of all that the game initially in question, Chibi-robo Zip Lash, is a second party game, not a first party one. Therefore we can assume that the game is not ultimately under the drirect control of Nintendo. They are there to offer a helping hand and support, but the directors and producers are the ones that decide whether the game will be 2D or 3D, how difficult it will be and who their target audience is. If they are pressed for time in terms of a release date or there is a window where much not is happening to gain a few sales, of course the easier option is to vote for 2D at the expense of something (in this case review scores and audience reception). A 3D game could have released later to better sales and wider critical acclaim. Why Vice chooses to focus on this specific example is beyond me. Is Chibi Robo really that popular with non-Nintendo fans? What about Animal Crossing Amiibo Party? Mario Tennis? They would have been better examples of rushed, ill-advised releases to complain about, and more justifiably so. They both could have been much, much bigger sellers. On that front I'm skeptical about any kind of Chibi-Robo game, 3D or 2D. Secondly, we have the thorny issue of "protecting kids". It's true that Nintendo is behind the competition in terms of online capabilities. Though voice chat, it seems, is the be all end all of any online experience according to some people. Anything without it is pretty much useless. But where is voice chat in Minecraft? If I'm a ten year old boy who doesn't understand modding, how can I chat with my friend on Minecraft? I can't. Granted I can on Playstation or Xbox, but the original PC version, which is by far the most popular, doesn't offer this option, so why is it such a travesty that the Wii U doesn't offer it when this one game which is "so hip with the kids" doesn't either? I am on the side of the fence which believes that both Splatoon and Triforce Heroes work perfectly well without voice chat. Triforce Heroes, less so maybe, but the experience is certainly not ruined by its absence and the emojiis are pretty funny even 15 hours in. Personally, I think voice chat would completely ruin Splatoon. It's just my opinion, but I'm perefectly happy with it the way it is, along with 4.07 million other people. Most online shooters are actually ruined by voice-chat, but that, again, is just my opinion. And this leads me to my next point - In-house Nintendo developed games are in the best state they've been atleast since the 90s, maybe ever. There, I said it. I want you to think about these five games: Pikmin 3, Mario Kart 8, Super Mario 3D World, Splatoon and Mario Maker. The first three were widely regarded as the best, freshest and most accomplished entries in the respective series for years. Splatoon and Mario Maker have been multi-million sellers which are both critically acclaimed and have the benefit of being new IPs (okay, I accept that argument is pretty flimsy on Mario Maker, but hear me out). Most importantly, the latter two had very young development teams. Teams that grew up playing Nintendo, not designing games. This bodes very, very well for the future - fresh ideas with an understaing of what the company is all about. The first three games I mentioned demonstrate that the older developers are also, still, at the top of their game. In terms of development, ideas, and execution from a gameplay perspective, Nintendo has very little to worry about. What the company needs to embrace is not "the young". The young do not have a disposable income. The young couldn't give two shits about voice chat and youtube streaming, the young only care about what's hot, not about what's not. The young care about what people are talking about at school and what's cool (it just so happens that is Minecraft and youtubers at this particular juncture, 20 years ago it was yoyos, tamagotchis and throwing coins at the wall, tomorrow it will be something different). Nintendo has failed in this regard, not because they didn't follow the trend, but because they didn't buck it. They played it too safe. The Wii U is an amazing console maybe their best, but I'm saying that to you as a lifelong Nintendo gamer, not as a 11-year-old boy who has never heard of Mario. What Nintendo needs to do keep developing their ideas, keep them fresh and interesting and make something that everyone wants to play, regardless of age, gender or location. Easy to pick up, tough to master. That's what they've consitantly done some well. Isn't that after all why we all love the big N? That and maybe get a new guy to market the stuff, because their marketing is god awful. Spend money to make money, whether it's through Youtube and iPad apps or not, just do it, and do it well. What I'd like to see is a strengthening of ties with second party developers, more collaborations, as third party games have sold poorly on Nintendo for upwards of 20 years. If the third party games are there, great, if not, it's no big loss, but ONLY if Nintendo does something unique. Remember Rare? That's why the console is more important than ever. Who bought a Wii for third party games? No one. Nintendo need to come out of the gate with something that catches on. Something new and fresh, and completely the opposite of what everyone else is doing. The company has built itself on innovation, not on following trends and this, in my opinion, is the sole factor in deciding whether the next console(s), whatever form it takes, will be a success. Give us something interesting and original and it will sell like hot cakes, regardless of voice-chat or streaming.Subsequent game and Amiibo releases will only add to this. I don't want to be singled out with this post as a blind Nintendo fan boy, who can't criticise the company and appreciate what they're doing wrong. They are a company who's history is littered with mistakes (particularly marketing), but I refuse to believe it's because they aren't doing what everyone else is doing. Yes, they are conservative in many regards, but this seems to be slowly changing with the NX and thus brings a certain degree of hope for the future.

I was watching it live, it was unbelievable, out of nothing. He really is having a party.

Amazed by those Splatoon figures. Thoroughly deserved.

Second course, feel like I'm getting the hang of it now Find the P-Switch and the hidden beanstalk for a speedrun DD26-0000-01AA-6B20

I'm also looking to pick this up soon. Hoping to introduce Mrs. Nicktendo to co-op platformers. Compared to the SNES game, how does it rate?

VIII was my first Final Fantasy, feeling the Squall love.

Sorry I couldn't make it tonight guys, was working late and tapatalk wouldn't let me access the forums. Sounds like I missed a good night. Next week....